


I can feel your touch

by harmonising



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Anxiety, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Lack of Communication, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28329885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harmonising/pseuds/harmonising
Summary: Paul and John. A study in small touches.
Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 14
Kudos: 75





	1. london, early 1967

**Author's Note:**

> "You know, what happens in later years, now looking back on it all, you just think of little things. You think, 'Oh, that’s why that happened!' Or whatever. Or you may just think, 'Oh, just sit around and hug him forever.' 'Cus that’s the depth of my feeling, for him." [[ touching is good ]](https://thecoleopterawithana.tumblr.com/tagged/touching%20is%20good)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today the sky had cut itself open, water pouring out in great big silvery waterfalls, like blood from a fresh wound. London was slowly drowning in itself, so it made sense not to make the drive to Weybridge, to wait the rain at Paul's.

The drive to Cavendish was so short it felt wasteful, their using a car to cross that insignificant a distance. But today the sky had cut itself open, water pouring out in great big silvery waterfalls, like blood from a fresh wound. London was slowly drowning in itself, so it made sense not to make the drive to Weybridge, to wait the rain at Paul's.

"Even with your glasses, this is the best for you," Paul had said to him, standing by John's car, the drizzle making his eyelashes damp, watercolouring his coy little smile. "Probably for the general safety of our roads, as well," he'd finished, looking over at John and snickering, palm spread and waiting for John to hand him the keys. As if the decision had already been made. It had. It felt nice not to be asked.

John watched Paul drive John's car as if it were his own, the leather sighing when he sat down at the wheel, soft and accomodating to Paul's body. Paul drove with the practiced ease of someone who had learnt to do so in the country, his hand firm on the wheel, the curve of his wrist beautiful and taut. The slick London concrete had nothing on mud roads and distracted deer. John's blabbering about their last session probably paled when confronted with memories of ten excited McCartney cousins yelling in the backseat. Paul smiled and nodded, laughed at the early evening traffic, at John putting on an American accent to match the radio. Paul knew how to maneuver his way around just about anything.

  
When they arrived, the gate was blessedly empty from onlookers; even the more stubborn of the Scruffs had fucked off somewhere dry for the night. It would take a mad man to go walking around London in this weather. John looked to his side, where Paul was skipping the tiny puddles along the driveway, humming along like he was Gene Kelly with a nervous itch. John walked beside him, keeping a safe distance from Paul and his twirling umbrella.

"You're going to slip and break your neck," John warned. It was an echo of a thousand similar situations. Paul dangling from a boat. Paul jumping head first into an ink black river. Paul staring up at the moon and getting a concussion for his loony foolishness. John saying, _are you_ actually _daft_ , pre, post or during those situations. Paul grinning back at him, mad, entirely mad, always. _Takes one to know one._

John steadied Paul as they walked to the front door, his hand to the nape of Paul's neck, right at the scruff, like he would do to the cats back at Mimi's when they were still kittens and stupid with their legs, wanting to jump off of just about anything. Paul laughed at him, made a show out of trying to break free.

"This is abuse of force, mister!" he shrieked when they got to the door, John pushing him forward. He could hear Martha barking from the inside.

"You haven't seen the worst of it, boy," he snapped back, in his best school master voice.

Paul fumbled with his key, turned to look back at John just as he was turning the doorknob. "Oh, haven't I? Do you promise?" he said, smiling something wicked John's way.

John laughed, flushed and happy. He pushed his way past Paul, scurrying inside and closing the door on Paul's annoyed face.

  
"Every day, you look more and more like your dad," John said around the last bite of his bacon butty. Paul still could not cook to save his life, prickly and particular about every texture, too good for old Jim's custard, too precious to learn how to make anything better himself. But he'd always been good at pub food, the kind that would entertain a stomach more than fill it. Happy, laddie food. "All them wrinkles, son," John continued, pointing with his chin at Paul's face. "You ought to look after yourself more."

Paul threw a napkin at him for that, hitting John square on the forehead. Martha raised her head from John's foot to sniff at it when it fell. "I'll throw you out, watch me," he threatened, lips shaking, his mouth wanting to break into a smile.

John licked his lips and grinned, his teeth still stained with grease and bread, his stomach full with more than just food. "Ya wouldn't do tha' to the kids," he said, gruff and mock hurt.

Paul made a face back at him, his own lips shiny. His hair was still fluffy from the towel, his chest bare despite the chill they had caught earlier. He looked young, even with the signature McCartney wrinkles, even with the old house all around them. "In me 'ouse we accept no constructive criticisms about the face, woman," he warned, licking his fingers clean, then pointing one at John. "Do you understand?"

John laughed at him. "Of course, dear," he said, voice high and shrill now, perfectly mollified.

Paul fussed over him some more after they finished eating. Nudging John into getting a second helping, into drinking more tea, getting himself a biscuit, ten. This, too, was like being back at Allerton, messing about in Jim's kitchen, Paul's hospitality as awkward as it was sincere.

"Are you trying to fatten me up for Christmas?" John asked after Paul's third offer of cake.

Paul smiled at him. "What gave me away?" he teased, blushing prettily around the ears. There was silence after that, comfortable and sated, while John did his best to drink his tea as slowly as humanly possible, in an effort to annoy Paul, make him crack up in boredom, under the strain of being still for too long. 

It didn't seem to work. Paul just watched John, quiet and intense, the way he would do sometimes, eyes nowhere and everywhere at once. John caught it more often these days, thanks to his more frequent use of his glasses. He tried to look back. Paul smiled when their eyes met, an oddly satisfied angle to the gesture.

"Since His Majesty is taking his sweet time finishing his meal," Paul finally said after a while of silent staring. His eyes were softer than usual, a clear sign that he was getting to the lazy side of sleepy. "I'll be off to change and have a kip," he finished, still looking at John with that hazy soft expression.

John hummed his assent, the last of his tea going warm and sweet down his throat, making his eyes flutter closed for a while in sleepy sympathy. Martha was snoring softly at John's feet. Going to bed sounded lovely just about then.

But before John could speak or open his eyes again, he felt Paul move closer, his hand to John's shoulder. "Don't take too long," he said, voice already crackling with sleep, slurring around the edges. And then he kissed the top of John's head and walked away.

It felt like a practiced thing, something borrowed from someone else. Learned. John opened his eyes and smiled, feeling warm and welcome by the certainty of the touch. Paul would go to his room, and there was no question that John should go, too. He got up and followed after Paul, Martha's soft footsteps following behind him. It felt good not to ask.


	2. allerton, 1959

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But he liked Paul the way he was right then, cat-like in his haughtiness, full of loving, playful, disdain. Pay attention to me, he said. When am I ever not, you daft git, John replied in kind.

Paul got into a bloody _Pat Boone_ obsession for one solid week. Memorising the words to the bastard's songs, torturing John with their dullness.

"When you wander into my dreams at night," he singsonged as John got ready for bed. Legs crossed, brows furrowed in mock concentration, with the shadow of a grin dancing about his mouth. John watched him from the corner of his eyes. Paul was a blurry, soft edged shape even when John was wearing his glasses. Always in motion, paint spread on canvas with playful urgency.

"When you wander into my dreams at night," Paul repeated, syllables perfectly enunciated. _Pay attention to me_. John sat on the chair by Paul's little bedside table, took off his shoes and socks, then his belt and jeans, and ignored Paul so pointedly he might as well be looking straight at him.

"Your _remarkable_ form," Paul snorted, giggly with John's quiet annoyance. He was going off tune now, voice cracking as John took off his shirt. "It is truly just _pure_ delight." John folded the shirt, sighed his long suffering torment, relenting against his better judgement.

"I _will_ kill you," he warned for the upteenth time. He stood in front of the bed, looked down at Paul with as unimpressed a glare as he could manage while wearing only his pants and his glasses.

Paul, in turn, just smiled, the grin from earlier finally dawning on his face. He waggled his eyebrows. "We'll come 'ome by the way of a drive-in spa--" he went on. A taunt, delighted in knowing he was going to get what he wanted at the end of it.

John watched him for a beat or two, considered being contrarian just for the sake of it. But he liked Paul the way he was right then, cat-like in his haughtiness, full of loving, playful, disdain. _Pay attention to me_ , he said. _When am I ever not, you daft git_ , John replied in kind.

John let the moment break to its intended conclusion. He tackled Paul before he got to finish the verse, jumped on him like an excited dog. John's fingers were barely grazing Paul's skin, but Paul twitched wildly anyway, cackling as if he'd been electrocuted. "Ach! Alright, alright, I'll _stop!_ " he laughed, face scrunched up in happiness. 

John let him go. Plopped himself next to him on the bed. The thing was so narrow that Paul's laughter was physical before it was sound, shook John's shoulder, too, when it bloomed.

"Bernadine," Paul deadpaned. No tune, just the teasing, that sharp sugary thing.

"Your father would _thank_ me," John told him.

He fell asleep with his arm touching Paul's, bare skin calmed and pliant under Paul's restless fingers. They were tapping a melody to the curve of John's wrist, circling the bone in rhythmic little stops. John fell asleep to Paul's humming, wordless and content.


	3. lime street station, on the way to paris, 1961

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trees outside cast moving shadows on Paul's body, scattered with pinpricks of light, like dancing stars. Paul was long and gangly even while twisted in sleep, and something in John's stomach twisted at the sight of him.

Later, Stuart would write to John, his pretty penmanship curling carefully around his disbelief: _Were you_ trying _to break up the band?_

John had not been trying to _break_ anything. He had been hoping instead to _build_ something else atop the old. If he was lucky. 

"A _hundred_ pounds?"

"Yeah."

"That's enough to get you to the bloody moon, Johnny."

"Hoping it'll be enough just to get the two of us a little farther up from France, actually."

What John had been trying to do, ultimately, before anything else, was simply to get to Spain.

On the train, Paul was the first one to fall asleep, only an hour into the six they had ahead of them.

One minute he had been recounting a story to John, hands flying about as the details got wilder and wilder. Then a beat later and his head was falling on John's shoulder, a warm solid weight pulling at the fabric of John's coat. John looked at Paul for a while, bemused but fond, waiting for him to wake up in a start, laughing awkwardly.

Instead, Paul nuzzled closer to him. John kept very still. Resigned to his fate as a pillow, he watched the downturn of Paul's mouth, the relaxed curve of his eyebrows as Paul fell deeper into sleep. 

"Why's your head so heavy when it's so full of air?" John whispered to him. Paul's response was a soft snore. John smiled. "Letting it out, I see."

John curled an arm around him, made sure Paul wouldn't be shaken if they hit a sudden stop. John did not sleep. He could not do so even if he tried, really. John looked down at Paul and thought about Cyn's curious face when he'd told her about the trip, the way her mouth curved into a strange smile, one he couldn't place. 

"And does he _want_ to go with you?" she had asked, smile dissolving around her cigarette. John hadn't been wearing his glasses, so he couldn't see her eyes through the smoke.

It had almost been enough to make John doubt his resolve to ask Paul in the first place. _Almost_ , but not _quite_.

John did not sleep, but he didn't care much for thinking, either. He swerved his mind off its spoiled path, redirected his attention to the sounds around him: the train tracks; Paul's soft breathing; the gentle pattern the rain beat again the window.

The trees outside cast moving shadows on Paul's body, scattered with pinpricks of light, like dancing stars. Paul was long and gangly even while curled into sleep, and something in John's stomach twisted at the sight of him.

Paul's height in itself was not news, of course. Paul had got taller than John at around the time he had turned sixteen, spurting a good eight centimetres seemingly overnight. He had complained about the ache in his bones the entire summer, even while he stretched his neck to try and look down his nose at John.

"My goodness, grandfather, you are preposterously diminute," he would say when he saw John walking up to his gate. "Put on your spectacles before you trip over yourself."

John resented him for it just for resentment's sake, of course, but also because he missed moments like the one they were having just now, times when he could wrap himself around Paul, could bend his own form to Paul's comfort.

John wondered if this was how older siblings were supposed to feel around the younger ones, protective and fragile with it, shaken up. But then again, with Jacquie and Julia, the most he felt was a amused sort of sadness, always aware that they were different parts of the same mess, ruddy hair and ruddy home life, and all.

If he and Paul were brothers at all, then John supposed they were the type described in old Shakespeare histories. Bound together by tragedy greater than themselves, fused at the core. The kind of brothers that died together, echoes of each other. 

John looked down at Paul's watch, glasses slipping down his nose. Another four hours to go. The minutes building and building ahead of them.


	4. paris, september 1966

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They weren't in Hamburg anymore, he wasn't blind with drink, high on prellies, stomach caving in with the force of it all. It made no sense for him to be so hungry, still, after all these years, but he was. 

Paul brought one of his girlfriends along, because Paul was in the habit now of never standing in a room with John without at least one other person to act as a buffer between them. John wondered, not for the first time, what that meant. If it did mean anything at all. His head hurt from the new prescriptions, eyes unused to staying focused for so many hours. He could see Paul, standing further up ahead from him, and counted the space between them. Weeks, days, ten years.

"Paul's been having fun writing for the film," Brian said, smiling. He was punch drunk enough, John knew, that he couldn't tell just then that that wasn't the best point of conversation to bring up.

"Has he now?" John could be civil when he wanted to be. Paul turned to look at him. "Last I'd heard, Henry had to call you up day and night to remind Your Highness of one's responsibilities."

Paul raised an eyebrow at that. "Heard a lot about it, have you?" he asked, capable of being a bastard, too, when he felt like it. "We're _all_ doing films these days, anyway. Aren't we?" Brian looked between them and sighed. It was a familiar disappointed sound, fit for the familiar disappointing scene the two of them had staged. John would felt apologetic, if he could bother himself to look away from Paul's sardonic little smile.

In the sitting room, Neil had put on a record, beckoning them to come over. Maggie got up to dance with him, Brian following suit, holding their drinks. Paul stayed at the table with John, the silence stretching between them, bubbling and acidic. On the record, some kid was banging away at his piano, wailing sappy English around even more saccharine French. John recognised the word for fool in the lyrics. He allowed himself a smirk.

"Does Queen Jane know of this little adventure of yours?" John asked, expecting Paul to roll his eyes, get up and leave, join the others in the other room. Follow the music, the brighter atmosphere; put a room and a few metres between him and John, for good measure.

Paul, however, did not so much as blink. "Do you remember the last time we were here?" he asked instead, voice very level for someone who had drunk as much as he had. He had dropped the sarcasm from earlier, eyes searching John's.

John felt a flush rise to his cheeks, the warmth of the wine rising to his head. "Sure. The Olympia. Shoddy amplifiers there," he replied. He looked down at his hands before Paul could respond, fidgeted with his cuffs. He felt inexplicably chastised, neck burning with an unnamed guilt.

Paul stayed silent. He had always been very particular about his boundaries, the places where he would allow himself to melt into John in conjoined delight. _This is the line in the sand_ , Paul always seemed to be saying, though the width and relative standing of the line changed along with his whims. John never knew where he stood.

"No, the last time _we_ were here," Paul corrected after a while. When John failed to respond, Paul reached out to him, stopping his fidgeting short. Instead of buttoning him up again, like John expected him to, Paul popped the remaining two buttons open, his fingers curling around John's wrist, thumb tracing John's skin. "You've tanned."

John swallowed; his sight occupied with the way Paul's face curved forward to look at their joined hands. Paul's attention was as much a physical thing as his grip on John was. When John spoke, his voice was quieter than it should be, swollen with unspeakable things. "Does that, the sun does."

Paul's grip on him tightened. "Does it?" he asked, looking back up and meeting John's eyes. "You should show me," he finished.

In Paris, Paul was larger than his inhibitions; his personality spread out like butter, softened out of all its jagged edges. Savoury, warm. John wanted to bite at him sometimes, get his mouth on the tendons of Paul's neck, the smooth, pale curve of it. They weren't in Hamburg anymore, he wasn't blind with drink, high on prellies, stomach caving in with the force of it all. It made no sense for him to be so hungry, still, after all these years. But he _was_. 

The curtains at the window behind them fluttered with the late night river wind. It blew some of Paul's hair into his eyes, made him scrunch his nose in annoyance, made him smile at the annoyance itself. His grip on John softened along with his face, but it did not relent. John looked at him and felt feverish, faintly mad with it.

"Tomorrow."

"Yeah?"

It was not the first time that John had wanted to kiss Paul, but it was the first time he heard the desire echo as such inside his own head, no surreal tint to it, bright and clear.

John thought about kissing Paul with the same sort of detached interest that accompanied intrusive thoughts about walking into traffic. _What would it be like to ruin everything with a single step_. Both trains of thought hit him randomly, at the oddest hours. Both left him feeling ill afterwards.

John moved his hand. Paul looked at him, mouth downturned, displeased. John reached out to hold on to him then, reversing their positions, the gesture unambiguous. "The last time we were here," Paul said, "it rained." 

"Yeah," John agreed, scratching his nails to the side of Paul's hand.

Paul hummed under his breath. "So tomorrow it may rain again," he said, reasonable even in his nonsense. "So you should show me tonight."

John breathed in. The air was bright and clear, filled his lungs almost to bursting. _A single step_ , he thought, breathing out. Then he nodded at Paul, and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song playing as they talk is Michel Polnareff's "Love Me, Please Love Me". The verses John catches go more or less as follows: I'm crazy for you / do you really take so much pleasure / in seeing me suffer. The song was a hit in France in the summer of 1966.


	5. 1958-1978, the spaces in between

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're here, you're with me," John said. And it was true. He kissed Paul's forehead, a small sun on his lips. "You're here," he repeated, a mirror himself, reflecting back at Paul the best parts of who he was.

_1967, Cavendish Avenue_

"You won't sleep," John said, his voice blooming like a flower, the petals sweet and soft in Paul's own mouth. Paul struggled to breathe through the perfume of it. It held him down like a living thing, clawing into him, a solid weight on his chest.

"That isn't the _point_ ," Paul replied, and he was John again, a teenager this time, scared and angry, a pulled stitch of a person. "I'm disappearing again, John," he said, because it was important for John to know, because _he_ would disappear too, if Paul did. "I don't like this anymore. I'm disappearing." Paul kept repeating himself, growing younger each time, less his own self, a mirror, always. "Johnny, I'm crumbling away."

"No, you're not," John told him. Touching Paul's face, his throat where the flowers were, dislodging them, making it easy for Paul to breathe again. "You're here, you're with me," John said. And it was true. He kissed Paul's forehead, a small sun on his lips. "You're here," he repeated, a mirror himself, reflecting back at Paul the best parts of who he was. Paul opened his eyes and looked. _You love me_ , he thought, reaching out to touch John's cheek. _You love me_ , he said with the voice in his mind that was John's. 

"Yes," John said. And there was no space anymore between them.

  
_1976, New York City_

"Don't," John said, encircling Paul's wrist with his thin, thin fingers. "I don't want you to." It was the first time they had touched in, what? Four years? Paul's skin itched at the contact, didn't know what to do with this texture that was John but didn't _feel_ like him. Paul wondered sometimes, at the kinds of things his mind chose to remember, the kinds of memories it dredged up only to hurl them at him, sudden and violent, impossible to ignore. John grabbed his hand and put Paul to the side, touching him for the first time since 1968, probably, and he did so because _it would be_ bad luck _for Paul to touch his child._ Paul wasn't angry, just unspeakably tired.

"Alright," he said, putting on the voice he used with Heather when she was angry at him but wouldn't say why. "I'll do whatever you want me to," he said, an echo of another conversation, which went no better than the one the two of them were having now.

Paul tried to reason with himself: he could be cagey around his kids too, understood the depth of that feeling, the urge to cover them up, surround them with safe warmth like a nesting bird. But John had said _you_ , pointed, clear that the problem here was Paul, not the touching itself. If touch had been the issue, then the nanny, a young kid who probably wasn't even old enough to _drive_ , wouldn't be picking up Sean and taking him to another room. Moving him away like Paul was _contagious._

"You should leave," John said, his back turned to Paul, his eyes hidden behind the glare from the window, glass reflecting on glass. He sounded like Mimi at her most cruel, the times she wouldn't even open the door before dismissing Paul. 

But Paul had said that he would do what John wanted him to. And if there was one thing they had become naturals at, then that was leaving each other behind. 

  
_1965, Key West_

Paul's head was on John's lap, John's fingers running through his hair, making a mess out of it, probably. Paul didn't much care. John was smiling down at him, singing softly. His breath smelled of good whiskey and cheap soda, spicy and sweet. Paul fell asleep breathing him in, dozed off to the touch of John's palm against his forehead, the gentle movement of his laughter as he sang, _Who wouldn't believe those eyes._

  
_1978, New York City_

John held James the way he would hold Julian back when Julian was a toddler, one big hand to his head, the other acting as a kind of makeshift seat. _A baby sandwich_. James looked extra small like this, blonde and very serious. Paul smiled at the sight.

"How's New York treating you, Master McCartney?" John was asking, very polite in his pretend broadcaster voice, nodding along to James's baby noises. "Oh, I _see_. Yes, the pollution issue is truly a dreadful thing." James burped at him, scrunching his nose at the sound. John laughed, delighted. "Sir, this is a family broadcast! _Behave_ yourself."

Paul watched them, something in his chest giving in at the sight, unfurling, a mess of feelings he didn't think he could put a name to even if he tried.

  
_1958, Mendips_

"Do you like me?" John asked. His voice cracked at the end, as if he had only realised what he was saying as the words were already tumbling out of his mouth. He looked down at his hands, clutched his guitar closer to his chest. Paul watched, fascinated, as the skin of John's cheeks turned a shade darker. _Freckles_ , Paul thought, a detached sort of giddiness bubbling inside him. 

"Sure I do," he replied after a while. As much as he enjoyed torturing John (and wasn't it a kick to know he could _do_ that) Paul also knew their time together was limited, not to be wasted. Mimi would be back soon, and although she had warmed up considerably to Paul since they'd first met, going from frozen disdain to icy disregard, Paul still didn't fancy bumping into her if he could avoid it. So he made sure to make the most out of their Woolton sessions, unwilling to waste time in arguments or needling John too much. That kind of thing was reserved to Paul's house, where they had always enough time.

"But y'know what I _don't_ like?" Paul said, voice serious enough to make John look at him again. "The way you're playing that song, son," Paul clarified. "It's absolute shite." He grinned at John's flushed face, at the fond annoyance playing around in his frown. 

"Show us how to do it properly, then, maestro," John said. His death grip on the guitar had loosened, Paul realised, pleased at the sight.

"That _eagerness_ to learn," Paul said, raising an eyebrow at him. " _That_ is why you're my best student, boy," he finished, voice wobbling in his worst headmaster voice. John laughed at him, throwing his head back at Paul's ridiculousness. 

"Go on then, old master," John said, waggling his eyebrows, his voice quivering with humour. "Show us your superior technique."

Paul reached out to rearrange John's fingers on the strings. John raised his eyebrows at him, but didn't flinch at the contact, allowing Paul to move him along as he pleased. 

"Watch," Paul said, placing his hands in a perfect reflection of John's own. C, G7, C he played, whistling through the intro. John mirrored him perfectly, except for when he hit the wrong note at the end, looking straight at Paul as he did so. 

"Oh no," he said, voice high with feigned regret. "It so seems that me dastardly clumsy fingers are at it again." John's blush had returned, but this time he was allowing Paul to see it, inviting him to. _Freckles_ , Paul thought again.

Paul looked at him and reached out once more. When they touched, John's smile was in perfect tune with Paul's own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scenes in New York are based loosely on a couple of rumours surrounding the last few times John and Paul saw each other. Key West is, well, Key West, and the song John is using as a lullaby is the 1930/40s jazz number "Little White Lies", which was a favourite of his, according to Paul. The "Do you like me?" scene at Mendips is another riff of mine based on a tiny comment of John's made during the Let it Be/Get Back sessions. The song John pretends not to know how to play is Elvis Presley's "I Love You Because".
> 
> The title of the story comes from the song "Send Me Some Lovin'", which was recorded by Little Richard and by the Crickets in 1957, and which John himself played a cover of in his 1975 album Rock'N'Roll. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
